


To Have and to Hold

by electricshoebox



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Homophobia, F/F, M/M, Memories, Trespasser DLC
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-02
Updated: 2016-09-02
Packaged: 2018-08-12 14:18:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7937851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/electricshoebox/pseuds/electricshoebox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set during Trespasser. Dorian stands on the edge of a suddenly all too certain future, facing the question of where to fit the life he's been building himself into it. How exactly does he choose between the redemption of his country and the overwhelming temptation to leave it behind for the love he never dared to hope for? How does he overcome all the parts of his past that linger in his present? Or you know, just your average everyday midlife crisis.</p><p>For Adoribull Minibang 2016.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Have and to Hold

**Author's Note:**

> This began as a way to explore Dorian's feelings on love and marriage and sort of ballooned from there. I hope you enjoy it. Many thanks to Jared and Katie for beta-reading, to June, Toft, Sam, James, Lore and others for writing sprints, brainstorms, and encouragements. And of course, many thanks to both of my lovely artists [milkymaccha](http://milkymaccha.tumblr.com) and [lonicera-caprifolium](http://lonicera-caprifolium.tumblr.com) for their gorgeous work and enthusiasm, I'm so glad I got to work with you both.

The first time Dorian’s parents brought him to a wedding he was eight years old, and it rained. It rained hard enough to nearly drown out the Revered Father as it pelted the chantry’s stained glass windows. It soaked through Dorian’s hair, ruining his mother’s careful comb work, and made his shoes screech against the marble as he followed her to a seat.

Later, much later, when he was a young man with the world against him, he would take it all as an omen.

As a child, he thought only of how much his new robes itched, how they clung too tightly, and how long the marriage rites seemed to ramble on. He strained in his seat, craning his neck to see over the shoulders of the ladies in front of him. Stormclouds dimmed the light from the windows, and the torches burned low. They had only candles on the altar. But he caught a glimpse of the Revered Father, an elderly man bent beneath his heavy robes, pale and serious. The bride and groom faced one another in front of him, hands clasped. Their faces were harder for Dorian to see, but every now and again he swore the bride’s shoulders shook a little. Probably trying not to fall asleep, Dorian thought, while the old man droned on from his great book.

An itchy seam chafed Dorian’s skin just then, and he sunk backward on the bench, curling an arm behind him to reach it. His father’s hand came down hard on his shoulder, and he stilled. He darted a glance up to find his father frowning down at him, shaking his head minutely. Dorian straightened, and tried as carefully as he dared to pluck his robes away from his skin.

Weddings, he decided, were terribly boring. At home his father had smiled, had said warmly, “One day you will meet your bride at that altar, and you will make our family proud.” Dorian had nodded, standing straight and proud in his too-tight, itchy robes, eager to win that smile.

But he couldn’t say, back then or years later, that he ever saw the appeal.

 

 

 

So when Sera slaps her leather journal down on the table in the Winter Palace courtyard and tumbles onto the couch next to him with a loud “Oi, fancy pants, need your help,” Dorian isn’t prepared.

Well, when is anyone ever prepared for Sera?

Still, two years away and he’d nearly forgotten her delightfully poor timing and the terrible thunderstorm shifts of her moods. It’s a relief, really. Even in the immaculate courtyard of the Winter Palace, she still kicks her dirt-caked shoes up on the lounging couch and wears her ripped up dresses with her nose in the air, daring anyone to say anything. Let them. They’ll be eating sawdust in their teacakes tomorrow or find their best shoes dangling from the rafters and covered in molasses if they do. Sometimes he envies her simple diplomacy. If only that worked for everyone. If only it were always that simple.

He’d been lost in thought when she’d plopped herself down, burying her face in the couch cushions. There’s a letter in his pocket he wants to rip to pieces, and there’s a look on Bull’s face that he never wants to see again, and there’s a man dead in Tevinter, and there are several Exalted Arses to kiss, as Sera put it when she arrived. If it’s too early for wine, he’ll take what distractions he can find.

“If this is about putting that concoction of yours in the fountain,” Dorian says, “then for the last time, I don’t care how many times you improve the recipe--”

Sera picks her head up, hair mussed from the cushion, and glares. “Not that! Shite, I’m being serious!”

“I’ll alert the Chantry,” Dorian says. A pair of women in ruffled gowns passes them, masks glinting in the sun as they turn to stare after Sera and then whisper to each other. He gives them both a brilliant smile. Sera furrows a brow and follows his gaze. She sticks out her tongue, and he can practically hear their noses wrinkling as they hurry away toward the vine-covered trellis in the corner.

“I hate this place. Lousy puff shirts, they can stuff their jewels up their arses,” Sera grumbles.

“Now that I would pay to see,” Dorian says. “But I believe you wanted something.”

Sera straightens. “Okay,” she says, and again, “okay.”

She leans over to the table and snatches up her journal, clutching at the sides. She starts to speak, then stops, freeing a hand to flutter some half-gesture before dropping it in her lap and grumbling in frustration.

“Come on then,” Dorian says. “While the day is young.”

Sera stills. She takes a deep breath, squeezing her eyes shut. Then, all in rush of breath, she says, “I’m gonna ask Buckles to marry me.”

Dorian blinks at her. “Come again?”

“You heard me!” Sera says, eyes still tightly shut as she drops the journal into her lap. “Adaar! Me! Marriage! I’m gonna do it--been _trying_ to do it--and you have to help me make it sound right.”

“This may seem impertinent,” Dorian says carefully, “but why?"

Sera’s eyes pop open. "If that meant rude, then yeah, well done you, it was. Unless you mean why you.”

"Well, yes, that too. But I meant no offense. It's only you've never seemed to care about land, or titles, or inheritance. I thought certainly that would be the last thing you'd be interested in," Dorian says.

"Not doing it for any of that rubbish, am I?” Sera says, folding her arms. The journal wobbles on her knee. “'Cept the name bit, maybe. Get to share it, right? Share the same name. Be the same family." Her voice turns suddenly distant, and she stares down at the hole in the top of her shoe. Then her eyes snap back to him. "I don't care shite for coin or whatever. I just want her. That’s what you do, innit? You find someone that makes everything better, makes you better, or want to be better, or something. And then you make it always!"

"Well. That sounds--” Dorian considers for a moment. “--reasonable, I suppose. Certainly a better motivation than many."

"Doesn't anybody in Te- _sphincter_ marry for love? Or is it all just coin and horse shite?"

"Ah, yes, marriage for animal shit, how I miss those weddings," Dorian grins. “The decorations--”

"Sod off, smart arse!" Sera tries to smack him with her journal, nearly losing a few loose papers as she does, and Dorian ducks with a laugh.

"Well, to answer your question seriously,” he says as she settles back again, “no. Marriage for love is--well. For the _soporati_. Marriage is for breeding, for alliance, for--"

"So, what? You lot too good to fall in love?"

Dorian laughs. "Oh no, happens all the time. Just not usually to the person you're marrying."

"That sounds arse-backwards and utter shite,” Sera says.

"I can't say I disagree."

"So you wouldn't marry Bull?"

Dorian starts. "I beg your pardon?"

"Iron Bull. Tall, horns, been shagging you for years," Sera lifts herself up on her knees, spreading her hands on either side of her head in the approximate width of Bull’s horns.

"I'm aware, thank you."

"You're practically married already, innit? Heard he pushed the Chargers here four days early just to see you, and when he got here you--"

"Your point being?"

"Why wouldn't you want to make it always?" Sera says, dropping back down onto the cushions.

"It’s not that--" Dorian stops. The image of that morning comes back to him suddenly: the Bull hunched on the edge of his bed, a sharp frown on his lips, as Dorian paced in front of him.

_Let me come with you._

Dorian sighs, his eyes falling onto Sera’s journal. "We're getting off subject. You wanted help."

Sera leans closer, squinting at him. “What was all that?”

"Did you want help or not?"

"Right, right, don't get your smalls twisted," Sera says. She turns, folding her legs up underneath her and flipping to a blank page in her journal marked with a thin piece of chalk in the center. “You have to help me make this sound right.”

“‘Write up a proposal,’ she says, to the man who left his homeland to avoid ever having to do that very thing,” Dorian says, shaking his head.

 

 

 

“Don’t be stupid, that’s _different_ , right? They were gonna make you do it. I _want_ to do this,” she says. “And Varric was busy with his tagalong.”

“There it is,” Dorian says with a sigh.

“Come on, you’ve got all your big words and fancy manners, so help me make it sound good so she says yes.”

Dorian rubs his fingers along his forehead and sighs again. “Sera, Adaar fell in love with _you._ Your words, your... turn of phrase. Just you. I doubt she wants to hear anything fancy and poetic. Whatever you say to her ought to come from you. It’ll mean that much more if you just say what you feel.”

Sera looks up at him and squints. “You just trying to get rid of me or you actually believe that?”

“It can’t be both?”

Dorian nearly misses his chance to duck this time, Sera’s fingers skimming the top of his hair. He reaches up hastily to fix it, and she laughs.

“Yeah, all right, fancy pants, maybe you’re right,” she says. She squares her shoulders. “I just... gotta do it, yeah? Just gotta do it. Just buck up and say it.”

“I have every confidence in you,” Dorian says, patting her shoulder.

Sera lets out a long exhale. Then she looks back up at him and smiles. “Coming to the party later?”

“Would I miss a party in my honor? Even if it is being thrown by Varric?” Dorian says. Sera laughs as she stands.

As Dorian watches her bounce back across the courtyard, his fingers stray to the letter crumpled in his pocket. _Why wouldn’t you want to make it always?_

 

 

 

“It’s not a question of desire,” his father had said once, the corners of his mouth edging down. He’d been sitting at his desk, writing a letter or drafting a speech, and still held the quill in his hand. Dorian could see him pinching it tight enough to white the tips of his fingers. When his patience frayed, the signs were always subtle: a twitch of his lips, the slow curl of his fist. As a boy, it terrified Dorian. As a man, it provoked him.

It was not, after all, the first time they’d fought this particular battle.

“It is a question,” his father had said, biting off his words in carefully plucked syllables, “of _duty_.”

“Yes, yes, duty to family,” Dorian had said with a wave of his hand. “Duty to generations of Pavuses too dead to give a damn. No matter what kind of children I raise, no matter if I raise children at all, they are just as dead.”

“It is _through_ our children that we keep them alive. Through our legacy that we honor them and all the work they did to give us what we have, and give it to those that come after,” his father had snapped. Fraying, fraying.

“The work they did,” Dorian had scoffed. “Which work was that, father? The conniving, the scheming? Or the brow-beating?”

His father had thundered up from his seat, and some part of Dorian had felt _triumphant_. He hadn’t flinched, hadn’t stepped back. It didn’t work like that anymore.

“I am done dealing with your ingratitude and your insolence. Without their legacy, you would have nothing,” his father said. “No fancy clothes to ruin in the slums, no one to wait on you, no silk sheets to sleep on at night. And you will respect that legacy and do your duty to this family with all we have given you. I’ve had enough of your… _predilections_ clouding your judgment.”

Predilections. Inclinations. Tendencies. Like it was a temptation he failed to resist, a particular cake he’d grown too fond of. Like he was a petulant child refusing to let go of his favorite toy. Like it was a simple act of will, something he’d been cursed with far too much of.

Dorian had clenched his fists, his jaw, and squared his shoulders. “Yes, father. Of course, father. Duty first, whatever the cost. I will have the perfect children for the perfect family in a perfect home. How can I fail, with such a shining example to follow?”

He had turned on his heel, ignoring his father’s calls, and slammed the door shut behind him. He vowed, with fists still clenched and eyes squeezed shut, that he would never.

 

 

 

But life has its twists.

When Dorian arrives at the Gilded Horn that night it's already late, and already loud. The Chargers spill across three tables, and their shouting spills across the whole room. Sera seems to have elbowed her way in between Dalish and Stitches, leaning on the tops of their chairs, and Dorian sees Adaar, mere minutes ahead of him, red ridge of hair bobbing well above the sea of revelers as she moves to join them. Even Blackwall--Rainier, that will take getting used to--leans against the wall in a far corner with a distant sort of grin peeking out from behind his tankard. It’s not the Herald’s Rest, but with the sound of Maryden’s lute and the few points at which Orlesian and Fereldan decoration seem to intersect--mainly, a plethora of antlers and animal heads--and the smell of a conspicuously Fereldan ale, it may just serve.

There's a seat left empty next to the Bull, who sits at the end of the longest table the Chargers have claimed. Two empty tankards already sit before him, and a third swings in his hand as the Chargers break into a round of their company song over the top of Maryden’s ballad. Dorian sees Krem flash her an apologetic little smile, and her frown softens a little. Well. Dorian might just be persuaded to believe there’s something in the air here after all.

Bull catches sight of him and waves, gesturing to the chair beside him with too large of a grin. Relief flashes quick and sudden through Dorian’s chest. Bull’s grin is tipsy, but his eye is clear, and soft. Better than earlier, when Varric tried his little get-together and Bull arrived already drunk. Peace, then, for now. Dorian gives him a nod, small and slow, and his lips quirk up.

“There he is!” Varric calls suddenly from another table. “The man of the hour!”

A few calls go up as Dorian reaches them, mostly from the Chargers.

“Oi! ‘Vint’s here!”

“Well if it isn’t Magister Pavus.”

“About time!”

He gives them an elaborate bow, then makes his rounds. More greetings scattered among the tables, pot shots volleyed between Varric and Krem, a teasing congratulations to Sera and Adaar (who said, according to Sera, “all of the frigging yeses!”), and on through the crowd. He feels, oddly, as though he’s practicing. The sea of faces he wades through in the months to come will not be so friendly.

He comes, at last, to the Bull. There’s a fresh ale waiting for him, and Bull nods to the empty chair with a crooked grin.

“I thought you might slow down,” Dorian says, leaning closer than strictly necessary just to feel Bull’s warmth against his side. “After this afternoon.”

“These are Rocky’s,” Bull says, gesturing to the empty tankards with a maimed finger.

“And that?” Dorian nods to the one Bull’s holding.

“Slept off most of it. One more won’t kill me,” Bull says. Dorian shakes his head, but stays where he is, pressed close. After a moment, he feels the Bull’s arm slide across the back of his chair, and smiles a little.

“You’re in a good mood,” Bull says, when Dorian makes no protest. Dorian chuckles and takes a drink. Across the table, Krem and Rocky are arm wrestling, surrounded by whooping and shouting as they grit their teeth and their faces go red. Sera’s draped across Adaar’s shoulders, curling an arm around her neck to poke the sawed off stub of a horn while Adaar tells Varric some kind of story. Varric catches Dorian’s eye and lifts his tankard, and the women turn, Adaar grinning and winking while Sera makes a truly unflattering kissy face.

“Why shouldn’t I be?” Dorian says, lifting his own tankard. “I’m being celebrated.”

Bull laughs. “Yeah. Good to see, is all.”

Dorian turns his head, not quite looking at Bull, just enough to see the curve of his arm where it rests on the table. He sighs, and drops a hand to Bull’s knee, squeezing a little. He feels one of Bull’s fingers slide against the back of his bare shoulder in answer.

“So,” Dorian says, before the melancholy can carry them too far, “do I detect a sudden affinity for music in young Cremisius?”

“Picked up on that, did you?” Bull says, and Dorian hears the smile Bull presses to his drink. Krem, at that moment, slams Rocky’s fist into the table, and cheers erupt from the Chargers.

“Atta boy!” Bull yells, raising his drink.

“I take it this doesn’t surprise you,” Dorian says, looking up at Bull.

Bull shrugs. “I tend to know where my boys have their eyes, or who might catch them. Makes it easier to watch for fallout. But Krem plays it close to the chest, most of the time. Had a feeling, but.” He shrugs again.

“And you think all will be well?”

Bull’s eye strays back down the table to where Krem’s letting Dalish prod his arm. “He’ll be good to her. Long as she’s good to him, I’m happy for him.” Bull turns to look down at Dorian, a sudden smirk on his lips. “Listen to you, worrying.”

“Nothing of the kind,” Dorian says, taking a pointed sip of his ale.

“Krem’ll be touched.”

“Yes, well. He’s no hope of getting those songs out of his head now.”

Bull laughs, loud and hard, throwing his head back, and Dorian can’t help a smile. It’s good, so desperately good, to hear him laughing. Dorian’s eyes fall to the long line of Bull’s throat, to the sharp jut of his chin, the curve of his jaw. When Bull settles, Dorian leans up, letting his lips nearly brush the shell of Bull’s ear as he whispers, “Finish your ale. I’ve a mind to take the celebration elsewhere.”

Bull smirks again. “You haven’t been here half an hour yet.”

But he downs the last of his tankard in a quick gulp anyway, letting go of Dorian’s shoulder to push himself to his feet. He stretches his long arms, probably on purpose, the bastard, but it works, and Dorian’s eyes stray across his biceps as he rises.

“All right, kids,” Bull says, “behave yourselves. Some of us need our beauty sleep.”

Krem rolls his eyes. “You’re not even trying, now.”

Dalish slings an arm around Skinner’s neck. “Look at the old folks. Off to bed, Mum and Dad, so the kids can have some real fun.”

“It’s a wonder they ever leave the bed,” Stitches says.

Dorian waits for the old fear to snarl in his gut as the Chargers laugh, as Adaar and Sera and Varric wink and whoop, but it never comes. There’s a terrible, terrible fondness blooming there instead at Dalish’s smile, at Krem’s. When the Bull’s fingers brush his, Dorian takes his hand.

“Good night, children.”

 

 

 

It had surprised Dorian on his arrival to find that the rooms given to Tevinter’s half-hearted ambassador were wholeheartedly lavish. A sprawling fireplace, ornate furniture, a headboard covered in carved flourishes and gold that arched up nearly to the ceiling, and heavy but delicately embroidered curtains that Bull hadn’t for one moment tried to resist teasing him about. There are exactly two surfaces in the room that they haven’t debauched, but there’s time. A little.

Dorian stands naked at one of them, a small cabinet he’s using for wine and the bottle or two of brandy he’d brought with him, and pries open a bottle of Aggregio. He glances over his shoulder to where Bull reclines on the bed on his side, elbow against the pillows. “I think I’ll start calling Sera ‘Mrs. Inquisitor.’ Perhaps I’ll teach her to crochet! She’ll love that. Or all the rules of a proper tea party.”

He turns in time to catch Bull’s eye wandering down his side and back up, over his chest. When Dorian smirks and raises an eyebrow, Bull’s grin is slow and unrepentant. Dorian shakes his head and slides himself back onto the bed, settling to lean against Bull’s stomach as he takes a long pull from the bottle.

“Well, you’re not gonna teach Sera manners drinking like that,” Bull says, reaching for the wine. He holds Dorian’s eye as he drinks, sending a pleasant tingle down the back of Dorian’s neck. Insatiable, this man.

“Drinking expensive wine naked in bed straight from the bottle? That ought to be the first thing they teach you about marriage. Might make a few of them happier,” Dorian says. Bull passes the bottle back to him.

“So is that all marriage is? Crocheting and tea?” Bull says. He curls a hand around Dorian’s thigh. “Doesn’t sound so bad.”

“Oh, being consigned to a life of sweater-making is only the beginning. It’s an endless list of trials: messy clothes all over the floor, snoring, terrible eating habits, and you’ve promised before the Maker and Andraste Herself not to kill them for any of it,” Dorian says. “It’s a terrible business.”

“That so,” Bull says, smirking, his hand sliding over Dorian’s leg. “I’ve put up with all of that, does that make us married?”

Dorian looks up a little sharper than he means to. He masks the sudden imbalance that knocks into his thoughts by folding his arms across his chest and trying to frown, the wine bottle swinging from his fingers. “I beg your pardon, good ser, my eating habits are impeccable. My parents would allow nothing else.”

“Oh? They teach you to drink like that?” Bull says, swiping the bottle.

Dorian chuckles, but it’s a little quiet. “Well, depends on how you look at it.”

Bull looks at him for a moment, then sets the wine on the night table and reaches for him. Dorian thinks, desperately, _Don’t_ , even as he lets Bull settle him across his chest. But Bull simply wraps his arms around him.

“Think Sera has the right idea, anyway,” is all he says.

“What do you mean?” says Dorian.

“Marrying for love,” Bull says. His hand smoothes down Dorian’s hair. “If you’re going to do it, seems like that’s the better reason.”

“Over political maneuvers, perfect children, power? I can’t say I’ve ever seen the merit in it, one way or another, but I concede it’s an improvement,” Dorian says. “If you like all that romance.”

“It’s growing on me,” Bull says, and Dorian chuckles again.

“I’ll wager something else will be too, shortly,” he says, “If I know your idea of romance.” Then he pauses, and shuts his eyes. “ _Vishante kaffas_ , listen to me. You’ve ruined me with your terrible jokes, do you know that? Utterly ruined.” He pushes himself up higher, glaring. “And if you say you’re rubbing off on me I’ll leave the room this instant.”

“Well, not _yet_ ,” Bull says, and laughs as Dorian slaps his chest. He catches Dorian’s wrist, tugging him down by it.

“Romance indeed,” Dorian says, rolling his eyes. But he smiles into the kiss.

 

 

 

It had been romantic, though. Coming here, seeing the Bull again. Emerging from the stables, beating the dust from his leathers, and then looking up to see those horns towering above the crowd of Chargers outside the tavern. Like a beacon, bright and clear across a dark sea.

Still, Dorian had had to swallow against the dryness of his throat before he’d waved and called, “Well, if it isn’t the famous Bull’s Chargers.”

Oh, his heart had raced as those horns turned. What to expect? “Love is a bit soft,” after all. But Dorian had known it for what it was even before he left, had long ago stopped using the cold or the convenience as excuses to wake up in Bull’s arms, had started keeping nearly half his things in Bull’s room. Until he had to leave.

They’d parted without promises. They’d exchanged letters, certainly, over the months. Even more than he had hoped. Letters not without sentiment: Bull slipped in an endearment now and then that Dorian had to look up in a very worn dictionary he’d pilfered from Skyhold’s library when he left (he’d simply mixed it up with his own books, of course, that’s all). So Dorian risked a word of his own. A few small gifts had come, as well: some trinket that caught Dorian’s eye in the market, something Bull picked up from Skyhold’s merchant stalls. They’d even managed to meet at the border once, a stolen night at an old inn where no one would know him. Rather than diminish whatever it was Dorian felt, the only thing distance had done was sharpen it until it jabbed between his ribs and left him breathless at the first glimpse he got of Bull.

But what did the Bull think?

“Kadan! You’re here!” Bull had called over the Chargers’ greetings, sweeping Dorian up in a hug, lifting him straight into the air and spinning him around.

“You terrible beast,” Dorian said, relieved, delighted, completely besotted. Hearing that word aloud (a different sound from what Dorian had tried to guess) had sent tingles straight down the back of his neck. Maker help him. “Put me down!”

The Bull had only laughed. “Can’t believe it. You’re here.”

“In the glorious--if a bit dusty--flesh,” Dorian said as Bull lowered him to his feet. He reached for Bull’s chin, turning his head. “Let me look at you.”

“Five royals says they don’t leave their rooms for a day,” Rocky had muttered behind Bull, just loud enough for Dorian to hear.

“Ten royals says two days.” Stitches’ voice.

“I’ll take that bet,” Krem chimed in.

Dorian had let go of Bull then. Bull frowned a little, watching Dorian’s face as the boys talked. But Dorian had only smiled--a small thing, for Bull alone.

“You appear no worse for wear,” he said. “Now, if you wait one more moment to kiss me there will be nothing for them to bet on.”

Dorian will remember the smile that earned him for the rest of his days. Bull had practically thrown his arms around Dorian, tugging him up on his toes, and had done as he was bid.

“Here we go,” someone had muttered. Krem maybe, or Stitches.

Dorian had slid a hand to the center of Bull’s back and then turned it, flashing the Chargers a crude gesture. Laughter erupted behind Bull, and Dorian grinned against Bull’s mouth.

 

 

 

 

 

And then there was later. Dorian, freshly bathed and having traded his traveling clothes for something simple, had sat in one of the stiffly overstuffed chairs next to the hearth. The Bull had wedged himself onto its twin, and he kept trying to sink lower into it only to snag the end of his horns on the back. His eye seemed drawn to the fire, or to his boots, or to the rug beneath. He had insisted, before anything else, that they talk. And he looked nervous about it, of all things.

“I had, I confess, a rather different reunion in mind,” Dorian ventured uneasily, watching Bull try to straighten himself in his chair again.

“Yeah, I--” Bull had rubbed his blunted fingers into the fabric of his pants. “Crap. I don’t know the first thing about how to do this.”

“Do what, exactly?” Dorian’s hands had curled tight into the arms of his chair.

“Talk,” Bull said to the fire. “About--about feelings.”

Dorian had not gaped at him, but it was a near thing. “I beg your pardon?”

“I want to talk about my feelings,” said Bull, louder, the words rushing from his lips like fugitives. “I wanted--I just--you should know that--”

Had there ever been a single moment of his acquaintance with the Iron Bull where the man had stumbled over his words sober? Oh, he had said plenty of things he likely _should_ have stumbled over, and more than a few things that left Dorian stumbling. Plenty of things that he shouldn’t have said at all, but had barrelled right on ahead with anyway. And here, he hesitated. Dorian had kept clutching at his chair, as though a great wind might come in the next moment to knock him from it.

The Bull had let out something like a growl and stood, suddenly. His eye at last found Dorian’s. “Fuck it. I’m in love with you.”

Dorian felt as if the chair had tipped over after all. The words settled behind his ribs like a burst of light, leaving every part of him aflame. What could he do as the heat of it shot through his limbs but stare?

“You deserve to know,” the Bull continued, “if nothing else. That someone--that you mean that, to someone. You don’t have to say anything, I don’t--”

Dorian pushed himself to his feet with shaking fingers, glaring up at the Bull. “ _Vishante kaffas_ , you insufferable man, what do you take me for?”

Bull had looked startled. “Hey, I--”

“As if I would do something as idiotic as refuse you,” Dorian said. “You insult me.”

It had been the Bull’s turn to stare as Dorian stepped across the rug, close enough for Bull to touch him. Bull’s fingers had twitched at his side.

 

 

“I heard a rumor that Qunari don’t do this sort of thing, you know,” Dorian said, his tone softening.

“They don’t,” Bull croaked.

“And so you understand my own silence on the matter,” Dorian said. Well. Silence was dramatic, perhaps. One doesn’t trade endearments in letters with one’s occasional lover unless it means-- _something_. But to define it weaponized it, aimed it straight for the heart, and Dorian knew better than to bear his chest to that sort of blow, so to speak.

And yet.

“I’d be a wretched fool not to love you, Bull,” he had said, raising his eyes to meet Bull’s. “And I am great many things, but a fool I am not.”

“ _Dorian_ ,” breathed Bull. Dorian’s hands had flown to Bull’s face, pulling him down, just as Bull’s arms wrapped tight around his back. As though a single second more of separation might have undone them both. A kiss without grace, urgent, the two of them crashing together in a wild mess of lips and teeth. The Bull held Dorian tight against his chest as Dorian’s thumbs pressed hard into Bull’s cheeks.

“Take me to bed, amatus,” Dorian panted, peppering kisses across Bull’s jaw, his chin, his lips again. “It’s been long enough.”

Council or no, Stitches might have been ten crowns richer, in the end. But the next morning a messenger had come to Dorian’s door with Dorian’s future in his hands.

Perfect.

  

 

 

For now, only three days later, Dorian stands in the middle of a patchwork crowd of masked and bare-faced nobles, soldiers, and even servants, all straining to see the balcony where Sera and Adaar smile and wave. Adaar wears the ceremonial chainmail Josephine makes her put on whenever someone particularly important visits Skyhold, a polished silverite that keeps catching the sunlight. And Sera stands beside her covered in white with gold adornments around her neck and shoulders. There’s a story to Josephine getting her into that dress, Dorian’s sure of it, and he makes a note to track down the Lady Ambassador for it later.

It’s all a testament to Josephine’s talent, really--not only the dress, but the fact that she convinced everyone to wait three whole days before the ceremony. Dorian has little doubt that Sera and Adaar were ready the morning after his party to stomp into the Chantry and have it done then and there, and that Josephine intervened armed with a very stern lecture about the international importance of the Inquisitor’s nuptials and the many and varying diplomatic benefits thereof, and that both Sera and Adaar stopped listening five words in, and that three days was the best compromise Josephine could wring out of them. He wonders, too, how the Council feels about the delay, beyond the bland pleasantries they’d reacted with in public.

Above them all, Sera and Adaar lift their clasped hands, without a single care. The bell tower chimes to life.

“That’s our bells, nobbers! We frigging win!” Sera shouts. Adaar sweeps her up into her arms, and they laugh into a kiss. Applause thunders across the courtyard.

He hears Cassandra’s laughter suddenly close, and turns in surprise to find her standing next to him. She smiles, leaning her head in his direction as they clap.

“They’ll talk of nothing else in Orlais for months. It’s already pandemonium, I hear,” she says over the noise. There’s a fondness in her smile Dorian’s only ever seen when her face is half hidden by one of Varric’s books. She looks young like this, without the customary frown or the stern bend of her brow. It’s almost sweet, and Dorian’s severely tempted to tease her.

“The Qunari that saved the world and her renegade elven bride,” Dorian says instead as the applause fades and the crowd begins to murmur. “The absence of holes from Sera’s dress alone ought to be newsworthy.”

Cassandra chuckles, straightening again. “She told me that Josephine tried to put her ‘in a dress so foofed you could lose a ham in it.’”

Her impression of Sera’s accent is _terrible_ , her deep voice pitched high and nasal. Dorian laughs hard enough to turn a few heads. “Oh, _that_ I would’ve liked to see. I was already impressed she managed what she did.”

“She seems more a miracle-worker than a diplomat, sometimes,” Cassandra says, smirking a little. She nods her head in the direction the crowd’s begun to drift, toward the hastily ordered tables of pastries and the cookies he’d heard Sera had demanded. If Dorian knows Josephine, there’s an elaborately decorated cake on display somewhere among the pastry trays with at least three tiers. And if Dorian knows Sera, that cake’s unmarred beauty will be short-lived. He smiles to himself, falling into step beside Cassandra. It may be the first wedding he’s ever found himself enjoying. Well, enjoying without having to find his own fun in broom closets or the occasional isolated alcove. But then again, the day is young, and the Bull is--well, the Bull.

Cassandra interrupts his thoughts. “So I--hadn’t had the chance to offer my condolences. Or, I suppose, my congratulations.”

Dorian's smile fades and he sighs as he steps to the side to let a woman in a particularly wide skirt pass them. “My thanks for both.”

Cassandra walks a little stiffly as she speaks, and has the sort of squared-shouldered, tight-jawed look she has when she can’t take a sword to the problem at hand. He wonders if this is a practiced recitation, and feels tempted once again to tease her, if only to avoid the conversation entirely.

“I understand your relationship was complicated,” she says, looking straight ahead of her as she does.

“That’s one way of putting it.”

“But a loss is a loss, and I’m sorry for yours. I--know that the death of a parent is difficult, regardless,” she says. She curls her shoulder in as a pair of nobles chattering loudly in Orlesian brush by.

Dorian sighs again. “I can’t say I’m looking forward to picking up the pieces. Or taking his place. But duty calls, as they say.”

“So you will accept his seat, then? In the magisterium?”

“I could hardly deny them the delicious scandal of it, could I?” Dorian says, a fumble at charm to keep the edge from his voice. His eyes drift aimlessly over the marble columns of the Palace ahead of them. “It’ll certainly be easier to push for reform from the inside.”

He feels her gaze turn to him for a long moment before she says, “Well, I do admire your convictions. And I wish you well pursuing them.”

Dorian slows. They’re nearly to the circle of tables crowded with well-wishers, and come to stand on the stairs just beyond. A group of soldiers elbows by them as Dorian looks at Cassandra in surprise.

“My dear Seeker,” he says, “I can scarcely believe it.”

She stands a step or two above him, and the effect is palpable as she folds her arms across her chest, frowning. “What, that I would believe in reformation? In standing for what you believe in at any cost? Making real change, even when no one else wants to see it done? Why wouldn’t I be the first to support such a cause?”

Dorian holds up his hands. “Peace, I meant only I was surprised to hear a compliment. And that I appreciate it.”

Cassandra’s arms loosen, just a little. When she finally scoffs and rolls her eyes, Dorian relaxes. “Well, there are not many who dare. Especially, I imagine, in Tevinter. I have not always agreed with you, Dorian, but I believe in what you hope to do, and I don’t think I’d be speaking out of turn to say the Inquisition stands with you.”

It takes Dorian a moment to rally himself, genuinely touched. “Well, how I could refuse, then?”

“Oh,” she says, “I thought you said you’d decided.”

“I--”

There could not have been a more traitorous moment for the arch of Bull’s horns to catch Dorian’s eye, moving through the crowd to one of the tables. Cassandra’s already followed his gaze by the time Dorian looks back.

“Ah,” she says. “Of course.”

“We’re working it out,” Dorian says. It still feels strange to speak of he and the Bull openly. There’s hardly any point in playing coy, these days, if there ever was any. A funny sort of blessing, and something of a victory that he can see it as such. _Enjoy it while it lasts_. He frowns, and settles on staring at a fraying seam on the leather of Cassandra’s armor rather than meeting her eye.

“He will understand, I’m sure,” Cassandra says, drawing Dorian’s attention back up. “He knows Tevinter--”

“Too well,” Dorian says. “He’s been trying to convince me to let him join me.”

Cassandra’s eyes widen. “But--”

“It can’t happen, of course,” he says.

How many ways he’ll have to have this conversation before the end. He wonders if it will ever stop stinging.

She turns to look at Bull again, then back at Dorian. She seems to straighten, decision made, and reaches to clasp his shoulder. Another day he might laugh, watching the slow process of her resolve, but she looks strangely earnest. “Follow your heart, Dorian. You’ll make the right decision.”

His lips quirk. “I’m afraid my heart has only ever gotten me into trouble, Cassandra.”

“Perhaps,” she says with a short wisp of a laugh, “But it did lead you to us.”

“There is that,” he concedes. Following one’s heart was far easier when one’s heart held only one passion.

“Cassandra--” he says, then sighs. “Thank you.”

She nods, squeezing his shoulder once before she turns to march the rest of the way up the stairs. Dorian scans the crowd, finds Bull bending his head to hear something Sera’s murmuring in his ear. He laughs, loud enough to carry over the noise of the crowd. Dorian’s hand tightens on the railing.

  

 

 

“How do you feel about rope?” Bull had asked him once, perhaps the fourth or fifth night Dorian had followed him to his room.

“Are you asking my general opinion of its existence or my preference concerning its use?” Dorian said, looking over his shoulder. He’d been lounging on his side on the pillows of Bull’s bed, still a little sweaty from their first round of sex, comfortably naked. The Bull sat behind him.

The question earned Dorian a smack on the arse, one he arched away from, raising a hand automatically to cover his skin. He had leveled Bull with a glare.

“Smartass,” Bull said, unrepetant. “How do you feel about being tied up?”

“Oh, I should be disappointed not to be,” Dorian said.

“That so?”

“Surely you didn’t expect me to be a wilting flower,” Dorian said. “If you’ve some fantasy of corrupting me then I’m afraid I’ll have to disappoint you. Unless you enjoy a bit of play acting, I suppose.”

“There’s a thought,” Bull said, his eye glinting, distant for a moment. Then he smirked. “But no, I never thought that. Just that everyone has their limits, and I want know those.”

“True enough,” Dorian said. His finger had begun following a dip in the sheets, tracing the fold, even as he still held Bull’s gaze. “This is not one of mine, then, if it comforts you to have it spelled out. Bind me as creatively as you like. I can make anything look good.”

Bull’s smirk turned more firmly toward a smile. “Don’t doubt that at all.”

Navigating the moments of Bull’s sudden kindness had still been new to Dorian then. Not that it was said with any sort of alarming tenderness, but it was genuine, in the way that the sort of compliments and pointed remarks Dorian was used to from most he bedded were not. Those were a means to an end. But Bull meant what he said. And that was--well. Dorian had no precedent for it.

“If you were to ask my family,” Dorian said, more to clear his own thoughts than anything else, “they would claim it’s being tied _down_ that’s the problem, not tied up.”

The Bull had only laughed. “Not a problem here.”

“Then by all means,” Dorian said, sliding into his most enticing smile, “do your worst.”

And oh, he had, hadn’t he?

 

 

 

 

It’s hardly another day after the wedding before the world tries to fall apart. Again.

It gives Dorian a rather dangerous gift: time to think.

He squanders some of it putting his considerable charm at Josephine’s (rather insistent) disposal, winding his way through the collection of nobles grousing about Adaar’s sudden exit and sudden marriage and the sudden afternoon heat preventing a proper stroll of the gardens. Dorian sweet-talks, and soothes, and distracts. And when his cheeks ache from smiling, he puts his muscles to use instead, following Adaar through mirrors and ruins and caves, and is almost glad for the familiarity of it. Almost. But in between, he thinks too often of Bull, and a question that pulls at him too strongly to ignore.

_What if I stayed?_

It keeps him awake one night, after spending the day smoothing the ruffled decorative feathers on a multitude of masks, and after the Bull comes back through the eluvian. After sex hard enough to send pillows tumbling to the floor, and to leave nail marks in the meat of Bull’s shoulders.

Bull dozes on top of him, one horn angled into the air and his nose pressed to Dorian’s chest. Dorian’s legs curl around him, keeping him close, while Dorian’s hands press into the sensitive skin around Bull’s horns. Then comes the thought, warm and sweet like temptation always is: _I could have this every night. Every day._ What would it be like, to follow Bull into wyvern nests or raider camps or Maker knows where else the Chargers might end up? Or perhaps he could join Madame de Fer instead, rebuild the Southern Circles. Welcome Bull home after every job, just like this. Perhaps even that strange idea of marriage. Dorian’s hands tighten around Bull’s horns as a dull ache spreads through his chest.

He envies Sera and Adaar, if he’s being terribly honest. Oh, he’d never say it aloud. And he isn’t certain what it is, exactly, about it all. Marriage has never been something he wanted. He tries to imagine calling the Bull “husband.” An odd thought. Not unpleasant, or unwelcome, but strange. My amatus. My beloved. My husband.

He’s never had a reason to think of the word happily. It’s never had a sound to him other than something like a cage door slamming shut. Dramatic, perhaps, but how else should he have thought of it? What good could it ever have meant to him before now? Power, progenation, the pursuit of perfection. Locked by honor and power behind gilded bars, lonely and miserable and lying, forever.

So no, it’s not marriage itself that he envies, then. Maybe it’s the certainty. The promise of a future faced side by side, whatever it brings. One life built with two pairs of hands.

Or maybe it’s simply the freedom. To love without liability. Without distance. Without fear.

After all, the notion of returning again and again to the same bed alone is unusual, in Dorian’s experience. The notion of returning there whether or not that bed is used? Foreign. The notion of sharing that bed, and the room, and the heart of its occupant? Fantasy. And danger. Tevinter is not a land that gives hope to men who cannot--will not--pretend. Men who are, for better or worse, quite immutably themselves. And love is, in the end, as illicit as it is elusive. As perilous as it is pointless. Love is not for legacies.

What a marvelous joke it is, really, to find himself here anyway.

He tries to imagine the letter he might write, held in his mother’s hands. _Terribly sorry, Mother, but I’m afraid I’ve fallen rather completely in love. With a Qunari. It may shock you to learn he is the gentlest and best man I have ever in my life known, so you’ll have to forgive me if I never want to leave him. Thank you anyway._

He sighs, shifting a hand to Bull’s shoulder, following a scar that bisects the muscle. He has always been selfish. It wouldn’t surprise anyone if he declined the offer, stayed in the unruly South. A good riddance, probably. Yes, it would disappoint his mother, and his father, wherever his soul rests now, one last time. But he’s spent his whole life disappointing them. What’s one final parting shot?

But it wasn’t for his parents that he had wanted to return. Not for their legacy, or their dreams. Not for his own. Yes, he is a selfish man, born to a selfish land. But to have stood in a forgotten temple and watched the lies of history unravel before his eyes and yet do nothing? To have begun to see wrongs he had not even realized, and let them flourish? To recognize all that his homeland might be if only it could change, and yet leave it to fester and rot? He watched the Inquisitor rise from nowhere, from nothing, to command armies and change minds, in her own way. She stood against a god-that-would-be. And though she never asked for her power, and never wanted to carry such a weight, she saved the world. And will save it again, if luck is theirs. It’s just as he told her months ago, when the thought of returning first came to him. If the chance and the power presented themselves, how could he aspire to do any less?

Dorian already knows his answer. Has always known it, perhaps.

He thinks Bull knows it, too. Dorian looks down to where Bull lays heavily against him. He didn’t ask Dorian to stay. He wouldn’t, and Dorian loves him a little more fiercely for it. But he would go, and Dorian loves him for that, too. Loves him enough not to ask it, and enough not to allow it.

 _Can you forgive me for leaving you? For needing you far away and safe?_ He wonders. _Can you love me even still, when I can promise you nothing? Will you forgive me for hoping you’ll stay, even so?_

But Dorian loves him enough not to ask that, either. The ache in his chest sharpens.

_Is this how it ends?_

As if sensing Dorian’s gaze, the Bull shifts and wakes. He turns his head and lifts it, blinking down through the dying firelight. The air smells faintly of the ashes that smolder in the grate.

“Amatus--” Dorian whispers. He falters, biting his lip.

Whatever the Bull sees, it creases his brow. He shifts again, and lifts a hand to brush an errant curl back from Dorian’s forehead.

“I’m here,” he says. Dorian doesn’t even know which question he was settling on asking but it still feels like the right answer, and he nods. He tugs gently on Bull’s horn, and Bull goes to him. _Please_ , Dorian thinks, pressing it like a prayer to Bull’s lips. As if the kiss might say everything. As if everything can be said.

 

 

 

 _Please_ , he’d thought once, years ago, in the dark of someone else’s house.

That bed had been ornate, too--soft, dark sheets that tangled around Dorian’s ankles, and gold trim around the bed frame. Through the open windows came sounds of the sea far below, and a breeze to flutter the dangling corners of the sheets.

He had held Rilienus against his chest, then. Black curls thicker than his own against his chin, warm breath on his neck. How illicit it felt, daring to stay the night where he didn’t belong. Daring to hold Rilienus longer than he had any right. Like they were lovers. _Please_.

“Dorian?” Rilienus had murmured, shifting himself. “You’re squeezing me.”

Dorian’s arms had fallen immediately to the bed. “Ah, apologies. I must have been dreaming.”

Rilienus had pushed himself up on his elbows. Even in the dark, Dorian could always feel when his smile bent into something a little wicked. “I didn’t say to stop.”

Dorian had smiled, too, shifting his legs and letting Rilienus slide between them. Kisses in the dark. Always in the dark. What if--what if--

“Rilienus,” Dorian had whispered against his cheek, “if I asked, would you--”

That was when the air in the room had fled. Want, fierce beyond physical, had crowded dangerous words on the tip of Dorian’s tongue. Rilienus had leaned back to look him, and Dorian had very nearly dragged him back down. _Kiss him, say something, anything else, don’t do this now, you fool--_

_Don’t ask for the impossible._

“Would I what?”

It hadn’t been teasing. It hadn’t been light. Outside, or maybe only in his memory, the tide had crashed loud against the rocks, louder in Dorian’s ears, while Dorian had stared at the gold coiling around the footboard through the curve of Rilienus’s arm. And _wanted_.

He will always wonder if Rilienus knew.

He had swallowed, after a moment, words dying in his throat one by one. Rilienus was not his, could not be. He had no right to ask the impossible. So instead, he had smiled and forced his touch to stay light as he skimmed his hands up Rilienus’s arms.

“Would you be so good as to suck my cock?”

That wicked smile. Had that been forced too?

“I thought you’d never ask.”

 

 

 

“You’re not gonna let me come with you.”

It’s hardly an hour past dawn. Bull sits on the edge of the bed, spinning a paintbrush in his hand. A jar of vitaar sits on the bedside table unopened as the Bull stares at his fingers. Dorian stops with his boots half laced and looks up sharply. His stomach drops.

“Bull--” he starts, then falters. He swallows hard.

He slowly pries his boots back off to buy himself a moment to think, to sort through all the words he’d been preparing. Then he rises, slowly, and moves to stand in front of Bull, close enough to touch. He takes a deep breath. “Amatus, you can’t. You’d be a walking target just on the virtue of being Qunari. You know this. But even if that were not the first thing to get you killed, even if we could somehow devise some story, a cover for you, the liability of our--of what you mean--”

“I know,” Bull says. He keeps his eye on the brush, running his fingers along the bristles.

“Not to mention that Krem might never forgive me,” Dorian says, aiming poorly for something less dire. “And I fear Skinner far more than whatever assassins I may face.”

He wins a weak chuckle, at least. Gently, he reaches for the brush, and Bull lets him pull it away to set it on the table.

“And besides all of that,” he says, letting his eyes linger on the table even as his body turns back toward the Bull, “I would not ask you to leave your boys. Even for--” It sticks in this throat, even now. “Even if I had any chance of keeping you safe.”

He dares to glance back at the Bull, but Bull’s head is bowed, his great shoulders sloped down. Just as he had been when the letter first arrived. So Dorian kneels, slowly, taking each of Bull’s hands in his. “Amatus--Bull, let me see you.”

It takes a moment, but finally Bull lifts his head enough to meet Dorian’s gaze, and-- _oh_.

"Bull," Dorian breathes. He lets go of one hand to wipe a tear from Bull’s cheek. "I--"

But Bull shakes his head. He presses a kiss to Dorian’s palm, reaching to hold his wrist. Then a kiss to the knuckles, another to his fingers.

He looks up again. "I love you," he says.

 

 

Dorian’s face crumples. “You terrible sap,” he says, the last of it against Bull's mouth as he surges up on his knees. The kiss is firm, but tender, and he hovers close when they part. He trails his thumb gently across the lines of the flail scar until Bull pulls back a little and sniffs.

“Fuck, I want--” Bull presses his lips together. “Not good at this crap. I just--it’s--it’s fucking with me that I won’t be there to watch your back. That I gotta watch you walk into that viper’s nest and try to save it. ‘Cause I know how much it costs to do it, trying to sort out centuries of bullshit to save what matters, and I know what it can do to you. I’ve been there.”

Dorian feels his face twist, and he feels ill. “Bull--”

“You’re gonna tell me it’s not the same and maybe it isn’t, but it’s not that different, either, and fuck if I want someone that matters this much to me walking into that crap,” Bull says. “But I know you’ve gotta do it. I get it, for the same reason. And shit, if anyone’s gonna bring them to their knees, it’s you. I just--fuck, I don’t want something to--to--”

“Bull,” Dorian says again, a little desperate, leaning back on his heels and letting his hand fall to Bull’s knee. Bull pauses. He looks at Dorian’s hand for a long moment, then mutters a curse and shuts his eye.

Dorian pushes himself up to sit on the edge of the bed at Bull’s side. “I hardly know how to answer you. I won’t be cruel and say it will be fine, that nothing will go wrong. It’s Tevinter. You know it nearly as well as I. If everything went smoothly, I might suspect something terrible at work.” He sighs. “Shall I say trust me, I know what I’m doing and what I’m getting into, and I’ll take every precaution I can? That, at least, is all true. But we’ve both seen too much of war and politics and people with power to think it’s that simple.”

He curls a hand into the quilt, gripping it hard to steady himself. “Do not believe this is easy for me. You’re everything I’ve ever--” He falters, biting his lip.

Bull’s hand finds Dorian’s where it clenches, pulls it gently away from the quilt and onto his thigh, lacing their fingers together. Dorian’s teeth bear down harder. So many things Bull will not say. _Don’t go. Stay with me._ So many things that cannot be. _Let me follow you._

“Where do we go from here?” Dorian says, hardly above a whisper. He stares at a curving white flourish in the rug beneath the bed.

Bull’s fingers tighten around his. “What do you want?”

Dorian grits his teeth. He pulls his hand away, barely keeping from wrenching it out of Bull’s grip, and gets to his feet, stalking several steps away from the bed. Dawn is growing brighter through the windows, and he stands in the gauzy shadows cast by the curtains.

“Don’t ask me that,” he says, sharp, keeping his back to the Bull. “ _Vishante kaffas_ , don’t ask me that. I want a thousand things I cannot have. You, for a start. You in my bed and by my side as long as we can stand each other. I want a life I’ve always hoped to have with a man I love and friends who don’t keep me wondering if they’ll turn on me at any moment. But I want to see that ‘viper’s nest’ that I call my homeland become what I know she can be. I want blood magic to be mentioned only in history books. I want the whole fucking world to change. I want to believe maybe, with more than a little luck, I can kick it in the right direction.” He steels himself and turns, balling his hands into fists. “And I want to try. I must. Even if I must do it alone.”

He holds his breath and waits for Bull to speak, to tell him what he knows is coming. To tell him it’s too much.

Bull stands. “All right. So we make it work.”

Dorian exhales sharply. “What?”

“We make it work. Magisterium gets holidays, right? The Chargers get jobs in Nevarra all the time, or northern Orlais. And we’ve got letters. Dead drops, even, if we have to.”

“Are--are you,” Dorian says, then stops. He swallows. “You’re serious?”

“Think I’d shit you about this?” Bull says.

“I thought-- _fasta vass_ , I thought you were going to say to forget it,” Dorian says.

“Why would I do that?” Bull says. “Fuck, Dorian, just because it’s gonna be hard? You can go halfway around the world and see me once a year. It’s not gonna make you any less my kadan. You wanna call it quits?”

“Of course not.”

“Gonna change your mind about letting me come with you?”

“We’ve been over this, you--”

“Then we make it work. Shit, we can follow Sera and Adaar to the Chantry if it’ll prove it to you.”

Dorian’s brain stutters to a halt. “Come again?”

“I know it’s been on your mind anyway,” Bull says. He moves close enough to reach for Dorian’s waist and wraps a hand over the silk. “Saw the way you looked watching them, and all that talk the other night. I thought you’d been trying to bring it up, and if it’ll make you feel--”

Dorian holds up a hand. “Half a moment, go back. I need to hear this. Whatever thoughts I was entertaining on the subject aside, you would really stand in a chantry with some old hen glaring at us while we recite Andraste's vows and light a candle, days before I journey across the world with little hope of returning?” He looks Bull in the eye. “Much as I enjoy dramatic gestures in theory, tell me you don’t think my selfishness extends so far as all that, that I’d demand your troth as proof and then leave you behind. If it’s something you want, that’s entirely different, but--”

 _Don’t offer because it’s another thing you’ll give me simply because you think I need it._ Dorian stops blessedly short of saying it aloud.

“Didn’t mean it like that,” Bull says, dropping his hand. He grumbles something unintelligible, shaking his head. “It’s not--it’s not about all that. And anyway, if we did, we’re the ones who decide what it is, right? Who’s gonna tell us different? It’s not some crap about land and titles, it’s you and me.”

“You sound like Sera,” Dorian says. He presses his fingers to his temples a moment, squeezing his eyes shut. “I cannot believe we’ve gone from arguing over Tevinter to what amounts to a rather abysmal marriage proposal, and if we’re ever going to consider it, I’m going to insist on a better one.”

“All right,” Bull says. When Dorian lifts his head again, Bull’s eye is soft.

Dorian’s lips twist a little, closer to a grimace than a smile. Still, he feels his shoulders easing back down.  
“Since you’ve brought it up, I’ll admit--a consideration. In the abstract,” he says. “Yet I feel that--this. Us. It’s already a great deal more than I ever thought to look for.”

Bull’s sudden grin, ever the signal of some terrible joke, is a relief. "You never looked for a Qunari a few heads taller than you?"

Dorian laughs. "I cannot say they are in fresh supply in Tevinter, for good reason."

"Lucky for me, then," Bull says.

"Lucky for you," Dorian agrees, rolling his eyes a little even as he lets Bull pull him back into his arms. He rests his hands on Bull’s biceps. “But what I meant to say was--we’ve made our commitments. Our declarations. And if I'm honest, I don't--particularly need all of that Chantry frippery to seal it. That's not to say I wouldn't ever consider something like it, for the reasons you’ve mentioned, or that the appeal is only in the look we’d get from a Revered Mother, but--" He trails off, looking up at Bull.

"I know," Bull says. "I get it. You're my kadan. That's a choice I make every day. No matter how far apart we are. I don’t need to be bound to it. Not right now.”

"I-- _oh_ ," Dorian breathes. "Yes, I--that, exactly."

Bull chuckles softly, leaning down to rest his forehead against Dorian's. "What, speechless?"

"A monumental feat, truly. They'll raise a statue in your honor. The only man in Thedas that could leave Dorian Pavus--"

Bull leans down further, capturing Dorian's mouth in a firm kiss. Dorian moans into it, tightening his hands on Bull’s skin.

"--speechless," he finishes, a little breathless.

"Mmm," Bull smiles, straightening. "A naked statue?"

"Whyever would it be naked?" Dorian says.

"A lot of 'em are, those hero statues."

"And what--you want to be remembered as you lived? Larger than life and eternally horny?” Dorian says. “Actually, that does sound appropriate.”

"Get 'em to put it in Minrathous, right in the city center," Bull says.

Dorian laughs. “My first act as a magister, then.” He trails his fingers down Bull’s chest. “But first, why don’t you give me a little inspiration for that statue, hm?”

Bull raises an eyebrow. “Done talking, huh? Don’t you have somewhere to be soon?”

“I could not possibly care less,” Dorian says, laughing with Bull as he pulls him down.

The world--and all the rest of the things they’ll need to talk about--can wait, for this.

 

  

 

What did he imagine love might be, when he was young? Can he recall ever knowing? Was it ever anything to him but some distant idea, out of reach and inconvenient and nothing worth hoping for? He didn’t leave Tevinter believing he would find it. He hadn’t ever believed it was his to find.

But then, the Bull.

Dorian thinks again of the smile that burst across Bull’s face at the sight of him as he rode through the Palace gates, of the ridiculous hug that followed, of Bull’s arms warm and tight around him. He thinks of the countless letters they sent, of the bulk of them spilling out of his pack when Bull stumbled over it on their way to Dorian’s bed, of how much harder the Bull kissed him when he saw them. He thinks of the way Bull said his name against his skin, of the way he breathed “kadan” after it, like a revelation, like a promise. He thinks of the taste of Bull’s smile against his.

He thinks of the knock on the door in the morning, of the drowsy stumble to answer, of the moment the servant pushed the letter into his hands. He thinks of standing numb in the doorway, of passing the letter to Bull, of waiting, ill and dizzy, while he read it. He thinks of the Bull’s eye, sad but sure, rising to meet his, and how the first words out of his mouth were nothing short of, “Then I’m coming with you.”

So what is love? A collection of moments, maybe, to be held and turned over again and again when miles stretch too long. Looks shared across tavern rooms, the fond glare after a terrible pun, the secret smile when fingers brush thighs under the table. And maybe it’s the arguments, too, and all the words they aren’t saying underneath that fuel them. And maybe it’s the touch that comes after, a hand warm on Dorian’s cheek, chest pressing to chest, fingers sliding between fingers. Maybe it’s the Bull spread beneath him now, letting Dorian press soft, wet kisses into every bit of skin he can reach, like each might be a vow of its own.

What is love? The expansive and undeniable union of one life to another, maybe not with rings and vows and cords, but with presence and promise and purpose. Words that don’t sound like “husband” but still mean “yours” and “mine” and “always,” if “always” is anyone’s to hope for.

“Kadan,” Bull sighs, as Dorian kisses his way down the curve of Bull’s stomach, across the straining muscles of each thigh. Kisses the tip of Bull’s cock, hardening beneath him.

“Yes. Tell me what you want,” Dorian breathes against his skin. He slides his mouth down over the shaft, a shallow tease, as he looks up at Bull.

Bull’s hand touches Dorian’s jaw, his thumb stroking Dorian’s lips where they stretch around his cock, then up across his cheek. “Anything. Just want you.”

Dorian shudders, breath stuttering out of him as he pulls back. Taking Bull’s hand, he mirrors his gestures from earlier, kissing his knuckles, then the ends of two maimed fingers. “I’m yours, amatus.”

 

 

And maybe that’s all that matters.

  

 

 

Months later, and a long journey away, Dorian sits at the ornate desk that used to be his father’s. The curtains are drawn back to let the early afternoon sun pour in over the carefully polished wood. The papers he’s been slowly trying to sort sit in a hasty pile in the corner, to make room for a mountain of letters and a few packages newly arrived that morning.

He opens Sera’s first, smiling to himself at the doodles covering the page. An innuendo-laden description of her honeymoon in Orlais fills what parts of the page the drawings don’t. “Coulda been you,” she writes. “Hope smelly Te- _shite_ -ner is worth it. Not the same without you here.”

A letter from Adaar sits tucked in the envelope beneath, with just slightly less innuendo. Clipped political updates, nothing that might compromise their underground operation. A few coded hints about their hunt. It’s oddly comforting, her familiar blocky hand and thoughts of adventure back south.

Other letters are stacked beneath, but he finds himself distracted when he notices Bull’s handwriting on one of the packages. He sets the papers aside and reaches for it, surprised to find it a little heavier than he expects.

Inside the box he finds what looks like a giant split animal tooth, covered at the top and tip and along part of the side in swirling silverite. A letter sits beneath, carefully folded. Dorian reads it three times.

 

 

He sets the tooth carefully on the edge of the desk. Then he looks down, tracing a line of the letter with his finger.

“No matter how far apart life takes you, you’ll always be together.”

Always.

Reaching for the crystal that hangs around his neck, Dorian smiles.


End file.
